Luce Says U.S. Liberty Depends on Journalists

Time Editor Claims Responsibility of Press Is Great in Avoiding Any Dictatorship

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED
May 4, 1940

In a recent speech, Mr. Henry R. Luce, editor-in-chief of Time Magazine, made the observation that as long as the American people is able to maintain the freedom of its Press, it will keep its own self-entermination.

Explaining his statement, he said that Europe's dictators first had enslaved the newspapers so that the revolutionary tactics which they were utilizing could not be spread to the people.

His suggestion for making newspapers and journalism in general so potent in the next few decades that they would be indispensable was "the Press must offer in the next few decades to the people of this country such an amount and such a quality of instruction in the facts and problems of public affairs as no people yet under the sun have been able or willing to receive."

Dictatorships Corrupt Mind

"Fundamentally, the reason that the modern dictatorships are unspeakable is not merely because of their murders and their concentration camps. Men can fight that kind of tyranny. The reason why modern dictatorships are unspeakable is that they corrupt the mind from within. They suppress the truth. And how is this corruption brought about? By the destruction of journalism!"

"In more than half of Europe the Press has been destroyed; in the other half it is mostly venal or emasculated. Here in America journalism is free-conomically free to engage all the talent in the world, free to show the truth," Mr. Luce stated.